Privacy Policy

Sign up for the Clarion Project's free weekly newsletter to stay informed about Islamic extremism and the power of dialogue. Human rights violated anywhere are rights violated everywhere.

* Your email will never be shared with any third party.

Stay Informed About the Threat of Radical Islam

The Clarion Project's newsletter keeps you informed with the important news headlines and news analysis on the topic of radical Islam and features regular sections with video clips, blogs and best-selling books.

Embed ClarionProject.org's News Scroller on Your Site

Width:

Height:

Copy & paste this into your html:

Please wait....

The Third Jihad

RadicalIslam.org has changed its name to

ClarionProject.org(the name of our parent company)

Same great content, Same great writers!

Like our new Facebook page:

You can still type RadicalIslam.org into your browser and get to us, or you can type ClarionProject.org

The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) says it “was established in response to the growing need of an Islamic jurisprudence specific to Muslims in the West. Its main goal is to uphold authentic standards using high academic standards, moderate approach and a rejection of extremism.”[2]

The organization has an archive of fatwas, or authoritative religious declarations, it has issued about how Muslims should conduct themselves in the West.

AMJA General Secretary Salah Al-Sawy served from 1992 to 1995 as a visiting professor to the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Sciences in Fairfax, V.A., which is a satellite campus of the Ibn Saud Islamic University of Saudi Arabia.[3] He is a founder and current president of Mishkah Islamic University of North America, originally called the Sharia Academy of America. He also co-founded the American Open Universityand served as its vice president from 1995 to 2004.[4]

He issued a fatwain Arabic regarding the question of whether “offensive jihad” in the U.S. is permissible. His response was:

“The Islamic community does not possess the strength to engage in offensive jihad at this time. With our current capabilities, we are aspiring toward defensive jihad, and to improve our position with regards to jurisprudence at this stage. But there is a different discussion for each situation.Allah Almighty knows best.”[5]

In 2008, Al-Sawy said that Muslims are only allowed to become American citizens when there are no other viable options because the country is not ruled by sharia law:

“As for optionally obtaining citizenship of a non-Muslim country it is definitely prohibited without a doubt, moreover it could be a form of apostasy or main means leading to apostasy because willingly accepting the laws of disbelievers and obeying it without any valid excuse or enforcement, or ignorance is considered a nullifier to Tawheed [the doctrine of oneness of God] and Islam.”[6]

The ruling goes on to say that citizenship is acceptable “on the condition that they do not accept indefinitely the law and legislation of that country and being indefinite belonging to the nation of the non-Muslim country…”[7]

Al-Sawy explicitly preaches “Shari’a rule” as a form of governance. He said, “Not ruling by “Shari’ah is the reason for all that the Ummah [Muslim world] is afflicted with … misfortune, neediness, adversity and disaster.” He said that the Devil has “deceived them into believing that the Shari’ah is not appropriate for every time and place” and that Sharia’s hudud, or penal code, is “harsh and barbarous.”[8]

On the topic of a Muslim’s obligation to wage jihad on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza, Al-Sawy said in 2009:

“[I]f the enemy enters the land of any of the Muslim peoples, it becomes imperative for the inhabitants of this invaded land to fight in their own defense and that this jihad is obligatory on everyone … And if they have the means to defeat their enemy, then the matter is over, and if not, then it becomes obligatory on the rest of the Ummah to enable them to do and to help them in this with every possible means of support: military, financial, political and journalistic.

The obligation begins with the nearest countries and then extends to include those that lie beside them, and then those beside them, until the obligation of jihad encompasses the whole of the Muslim world.”[9]

Al-Sawy’s fatwa said that those unable to participate in physical jihad can assist with “the jihad of wealth, the jihad in the battlefields of politics, finance, journalism and da’wah [proselytizing ]…”

It also said that the conflict should be used to “revive the obligation of jihad;” “revive the call to Sharia rule;” “reinvigorate and continue the option of the resistance and rejection of the Zionist project;” “revive the policy of using all available and possible means of da’wah and jihad” and “revive the bonds between Muslim communities living beyond the lands of Islam.”[10]

In 2009, AMJA declared that Muslims are required to “support the oppressed, rescuing the afflicted from even amongst the non-Muslims, and stopping the oppressor and preventing him from oppression even from amongst the Muslims.”[11]

One fatwa states that Muslims are only allowed to join the U.S. military if they are not “involved in fighting, harming, or even bothering Muslims at all.”[12] In 2007, AMJA said that Muslims are forbidden from providing food to U.S. and other foreign soldiers in Muslim countries.[13]

In another, AMJA scholar Hatem al-Haj warns Muslims aspiring to join the police force against enforcing laws that violate sharia and the job’s potential to cause sin, such as “gender mixing.” He said that Muslims are not permitted to join the FBI and other national security agencies.[14] AMJA warns that Muslim police officers “might have to arrest a Muslim man whose wife said he ‘raped’ her or forced her.”[15]

Al-Sawy states that there are times when Muslims are permitted to lie when there are “compelling strokes of necessity.” He adds, “If someone is compelled to lying, he can indirectly say something that his listener can understand something else.”[16]

AMJA also states that Muslim judges in non-Muslim countries must “judge by the rulings of the Sharia as much as possible, even if by a ruse.” He “must in his heart hate the man-made law” and “do everything in his power to enact laws that allow the Muslims to practice their Shari’a.”[17]

A 2009 AMJA fatwa endorses marital rape: “As for the issue of forcing a wife to have sex, if she refuses, this would not be called rape, even though it goes against natural instincts and destroys love and mercy, and there is a great sin upon the wife who refuses.”[18] A 2006 ruling by al-Haj states that the punishment for a married man guilty of adultery is stoning.[19]

A 2009 fatwa by Al-Sawy rules that critics of Islam’s founder deserve the death penalty, stating, “repentance does not lift up the set punishment for cursing and insulting the Prophet, i.e., execution.”[20] A 2006 fatwa issued by al-Haj explicitly states that the punishment for leaving Islam is death, but it can only be carried out by an Islamic judiciary system and not individuals.[21]

In 2010, al-Haj approved of female circumcision, stating that the AMJA version of it is different than what is practiced in some African communities. He claimed, “Some extremists from the West and their devout followers in the Muslim world would like to brand all circumcision as female genital mutilation.” He said that because the West has not objectively studied the issue, “all of their propaganda about female circumcision is nothing more than bigotry.”[22]

Al-Sawy advised in 2009, “Do not take as a friend anyone apart from the believers, and do not take other than Allah, His Messenger and the believers as intimates. Your sincere friends should only be the people of faith.”[23]